So What Are you Reading?: Generations

I've started Ship of the Line by Diane Carey. Her reputation for being inspired by real navies is not overstated! I wonder if she named the first officer Bush in a nod to the Horatio Hornblower series...seems quite possible given that she quotes Hornblower and the Atropos.

I've started Ship of the Line by Diane Carey. Her reputation for being inspired by real navies is not overstated! I wonder if she named the first officer Bush in a nod to the Horatio Hornblower series...seems quite possible given that she quotes Hornblower and the Atropos.

I finished Plagues of Night a week or so ago and re-started the novella Honor in the Night from Myriad Universes: Shattered Light, which I just finished less than five minutes ago. I'm now going to return to the Taurus Reach by reading Vanguard: Declassified and Vanguard: What Judgments Come.

^ Q-in-Law is arguably the funniest of all the Trek books ever. If you ever get a chance to snag the audio book, do so. It's abridged, but it's narrated by Majel Barrett and John de Lancie, which adds a whole new dimension to the hilarity.

"Worf! Greetings! Still climbing up the evolutionary ladder? Oh, you'll all have to forgive Worf. He's just discovered opposable thumbs, and he's feeling overly confident."

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Just ordered the audio book based on this post. I loved the novel, and the chance to hear them actually deliver lines like this is too good to pass up. Thanks for pointing it out!

I've just started Philip K. Dick's Gather Yourselves Together. There's some debate as to whether or not this is his first (surviving) novel or his second (some scholars believe that Voices from the Street predates GYT by a year, and even so the lost Return to Lilliput predates them all). It was published originally in the mid-90s. Harcourt issued it in paperback for the first time recently.

Since before this I read both Plagues of Night and Raise the Dawn back to back, I'm going with two Star Wars books back to back now, and have started Jedi Trial by David Sherman & Dan Cragg. I think after this I'm going to finish Robots: The Modern AI.

Jedi Trial is quite bad, but I thought the MedStar books were fun enough.

Night/Dawn kick the crap out of either of them, though

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YUCK! I hated Jedi Trial! Everyone was out of character. Michael Stackpole should have written that, since Halcyon was his character!

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After a quick Wookieepedia search, I see that Halcyon was originally from the X-Wing novels. Luckily for me I haven't read them yet, so he won't seem out of character to me since this is my first exposure to him.

I just started reading Station Rage by Diane Carey, #16 in the DS9 books. The plot so far: O'Brien and Odo are poking around in an abandoned part of the station and stumble into a chamber of dead-but-preserved Cardassians. This is creepy as hell, but Sisko can't figure out how to start inquiring into how they got there without letting the Cardassians know that their tomb (...in an ore-mining station?) has been violated, so he orders it sealed. Unfortunately, Garak realizes the dead Cardassians aren't dead, they're just in stasis, and apparently one of them is like the second coming of Jesus, because Garak has this worshipful reaction and then wakes them up. Now they're starting to terrorize the station, because they're a unit of killers.

This is basically the episode Empok Nor, but written two years earlier and presented in a different way. I wonder if that episode was crafted based on this? The Memory Alpha articles for both the book and the episode don't mention the connection, which is odd.

This is basically the episode Empok Nor, but written two years earlier and presented in a different way. I wonder if that episode was crafted based on this? The Memory Alpha articles for both the book and the episode don't mention the connection, which is odd.

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The episode certainly wasn't based on the book. The makers of the show were too busy making the show to pay much attention to the books, and if they had based it on a book, they surely would have credited the original author, otherwise it would've been plagiarism.

It's very, very common for different writers to come up with similar ideas, especially when working on the same series. Plenty of Trek novels have resembled the plots of episodes that came out shortly after -- or even before -- their publication dates. VGR: Seven of Nine covered the same ground as "Infinite Regress." ENT: Surak's Soul overlapped elements of "The Seventh," but was published late enough that it could be adjusted to fit that episode. Heck, when I pitched to DS9 that one time, I actually pitched a story similar to "Empok Nor" a year or two before they did that episode. But it never occurred to me that they "stole my idea," because I'm sure I wasn't the only person to come up with that idea. (It's a natural money-saver, visiting a station that's a dead ringer for your standing sets, so I'm sure countless writers came up with variations on it.) And because I'm aware that the number one reason television pitches are rejected is "We're already doing one like that."

Still only about 2/3 of the way through The Assassination Game, a busy week threw me off. But I'm starting IDW's Star Trek: Volume 2. I actually read the "Operation: Annihilate!" adaptation in issues, but decided to jump to trade-waiting on it. Wish IDW packaged these in groups of 6, though.

I had to read it twice. The first time I was annoyed with it, the second time I "got" it.

I think it's okay. It's a very complete, even radical, reboot of Batman, which was the root cause of my annoyance -- things that I've taken for granted for twenty years or more were either slightly off or totally wrong. It's the polar opposite of Grant Morrison's approach to Batman, basically. Morrison assumes everything is true and makes it work. Johns doesn't assume anything and builds his story, his characters, and his universe from the ground up with no preconceptions.

The second time, the time I "got" it, I thought it worked. It read like what I think a Geoff Johns blueprint for a Batman movie reboot would be.

The episode certainly wasn't based on the book. The makers of the show were too busy making the show to pay much attention to the books, and if they had based it on a book, they surely would have credited the original author, otherwise it would've been plagiarism.

It's very, very common for different writers to come up with similar ideas, especially when working on the same series.

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That's a fair point. And I suppose if Cardassians are involved, including Garak at some point is almost unavoidable.

While I'm still finishing Station Rage, I intend to buy a few books this weekend...Plagues of Night, Forgotten History, and perhaps a Vanguard novel.